Self-presentation is a performance just as the choice of toxic words or images is.
Slang, new language, etymology, cultural history. Language Consultant at King's College London.
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Self-presentation is a performance just as the choice of toxic words or images is.
It’s just three days until the launch! You are warmly invited to the launch of my new poetry book ‘The Laureate Collection’ on Zoom Friday 5th September at 7pm featuring poetry written as commissions during my time as Staffordshire Poet Laureate and personal poems written since
You all deserve much better, but where is the fightback? In the UK we have two useless mainstream parties but at least we have three progressive minority parties.
Look at him
Please participate in this short survey about innovative grammar in Australian English!
On est mercredi…
We in Europe have been watching this happening in disbelief for months and months
Please circulate these two job postings, and apply! I will be working on this project, so we will be close colleagues. Postdoc in experimental linguistics job posting: jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/2... PhD in semantics/pragmatics job posting: jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/a...
Nice!
The verb 'must' looks a lot like German 'musste' and Dutch 'moest'. But wait a minute: those mean "had to", not "have to". They're past tense forms. Well, 'must' used to be a past tense too! It ditched its present tense, which would've become *moot if it had survived. Here's the story of 'must':
We are the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project, based in Irish & Celtic Studies at QUB since 1987. Funded by DfC since 2023, we research the origins and meanings of local names and support councils with Irish forms for signage. Explore our searchable corpus at placenamesni.org.
Soy yo
theconversation.com/chatgpt-only...
Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them at least don't hurt them. Love And Compassion Are Necessities, Not Luxuries. Without Them, Humanity Cannot Survive. – Dalai Lama DALAI LAMA #Buddhism #Meditation #Wisdom #love #Peace #Buddhisattvas
Seemingly wedded to our apps today it’s easy to forget that only a few decades ago Polari was used widely as a safe means of communication for the gay community. buff.ly/2FGcEQg
The Crabkeeper 🦀
Love this!
So far so good…
UK advertises contract to run Erasmus scheme Tender indicates ministers are preparing ground to rejoin European student swap programme. More from @financialtimes.com @pmdfoster.bsky.social @amyborrett.ft.com @andybounds.bsky.social on.ft.com/4pg1XbA #education #educationnews
Chicken Ticket(!) Masala was hailed as the UK’s favourite dish by New Labour
‘Creeping’????
Will there be enough academics to help students in the best way possible? If planned redundancies go ahead, I doubt it
Latest storm names announced❗ Here are the #StormNames for 2025/26, announced with Met Eireann and KNMI, the Dutch National Weather Service. Has your name made the list?
Still two more hours to apply for this wonderful job. Come and work with us at the Institute!
I was too exhausted after my flight to prepare anything
bsky.app/profile/char...
The moon. At last.
I don’t know where to start…
Donald Trump doesn’t want non-English-speakers to assimilate. He just wants them gone. First he declared English official. Then his Dept. of Ed dropped support for English language learners. What's next for them? A ticket to Rwanda? read about it here: weboflanguage.substack.com/p/donald-tru...
I’ll be back in time for dinner I promise…
Viel Glück!
The term joins, 'slop', 'ultraslop', 'retroslop', 'slopfrastructure'...
After the Flemish government declared language learning 'a hobby' and almost tripled fees in adult training centres, enrolment for English and French dropped from over 800 leaners to 10 (yes, ten). This is more than short-sighted budget austerity, it's far-right isolationist and anti-diverse policy.
I would have thought that three weeks after all the other articles, the NY Times would have made an effort to get it right, but no, the @elitan.bsky.social article that appeared today about the origin of "clanker" also ignores its history. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/t...
Taking a deep dive into the origins of the AI-derogative "clanker" this morning, courtesy of the excellent Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. sfdictionary.com/view/3048/cl... #clanker
People are still pathetically looking for coherence or consistency
A last minute resurgence of summer. The gendarmes are out in force.
North London people. If you a) have kids and b) are around next Sunday, then you should 100% take your kids to see The Listies at ArtsDepot. Trust me, you will all leave having snort laughed so hard for an hour: www.artsdepot.co.uk/event/the-li...
Tomorrow, I am off to a few days in beautiful Braga (Portugal), to teach a course on discourse and cognition. It feels pleasantly indulgent to go away when others are back to school (sorry, teachers!). ffcs.braga.ucp.pt/pt-pt/braga-...
The responses to this comment for example
The team - represented here by @mishee54.bsky.social @jrkasstan.bsky.social - at #SLE this week to make the case that the govt’s curriculum review is an opportunity to reimagine how we can deliver language teaching. More here: linguisticsinmfl.co.uk/wp-content/u... #edusky #linguistics
Early registration rates for the MSA Conference in Boston this October end tomorrow, August 31. Register before Sept. 1 to secure these rates! Register here: www.moderniststudies.org/conference/M... And email msa2025boston@gmail.com with any questions or concerns about the conference or program.
I don’t have statistical evidence but I see very little posting or engagement on #linguistics or #lexicography here
Can we (friends in Europe) respectfully suggest that they hurry the fuck up
It is indeed called that
An unusually comprehensive collection of #slang used by UK #schoolkids in 2025...https://teachertapp.com/uk/articles/down-with-the-kids-slang-in-british-classrooms-2025/
Canada has similar levels of gun ownership to the US. They just don’t kill each other.
Get to sleep now…
I’ll simply say, JB A very HBD!
Keir Starmer’s deeply haunted cat is probably the best thing I’ve ever seen on BlueSky
The middle-aged are no longer the most miserable. Today's youth are unhappier than my cohort—and there's nothing to say they won't get more miserable still—that is, the U-bend could hold, but from a worse starting point... www.economist.com/science-and-...
Also that
Slow-witted, disengaged, querulous...
🌟 Writing Wrongs Live! 🌟 We warmly invite you to our Writing Wrongs live event on the 22nd of October, 4-6pm at the Steelhouse Lane Lock-Up in Birmingham, UK! You can now register following the link below 👇 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/writing-wr...
This is the content we come here for
✍️ Babel Young Writers' Competition! Write on your specialist linguistic topic & you could win... 📖 Publication in Babel 📚 A year's subscription! 📘 Our Linguistic Lexicon book! 🐦 Get inspiration from Benjamin Hong on whistled languages: babelzine.co.uk/wp-content/u...
I despair. People expressing surprise at the actions of Israel, Russia and Trump after years of outrages and atrocities.
Participants needed for research on innovative grammar in Australian English. It will involve an anonymous online questionnaire that will take approximately 5-15 minutes to complete.
'Starting to see'???? 'Threatens'????
Slovenian - Austrian border
Three more days…
Yes. The logistics are hard to compute. I wish that somehow people could be shown that the fetishisation of guns is completely abnormal and unnecessary. But…
OK sorry if I sounded hostile but I have lived in the US and I have tried to reason with the gun lobby. Completely futile.
Look at the statistics on gun deaths for other anglosphere countries, then look at the numbers especially for Canada where gun ownership is similar to the US but they don’t kill each other. I’m not making a facile point: there is a real psychosocial problem with the US population.
It works well in all the civilised countries in the world. And it’s a bad faith, morally illiterate argument.
🤦♂️
I have a great admiration for doggerel and regret its virtual disappearance
The corporate euphemisms for price hikes are hilarious. Urban Outfitters: "gentle" price adjustments Victoria's Secret: "evolving promotional approach" Hormel: "targeted pricing actions” @wsj.com $HRL www.wsj.com/business/ear...
That’s a new and intriguing one
And why the US is incapable of banning private firearms.
Please consider following Language and Society Scotland, a new network for scholars, practitioners, writers, activists and other stakeholders working on issues broadly related to the study of language and society in Scotland. On Bluesky: @langsocscot.bsky.social
There’s a section in my book Borderlines about what the people of the eastern German town of Ostritz did when a local hotel hosted Nazi festivals in 2018 and 2019. They held a counter-festival which attracted far more people, and in 2019 bought all the beer in town to ruin the fascists’ fun.
syntaxfest.github.io/syntaxfest25/
Hvala!
Venue/location/website?
I'm doing my annual update to my list of linguistics and language podcasts: www.superlinguo.com/post/1584480... If you listen to anything that's not already on the list, please let me know about it! (I wait until something has 5 episode before adding it to the list)
This chunky beast just arrived - some excellent stuff in here, as well as my own bit on cognitive stylistics. www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/1...
Working across disciplines? Up two years funding for established researchers with big ideas… closing on 9 Sept (3pm). Fantastic opportunity! www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/apex...
‘New words’ talk, worth a listen.⬇️
Poverty Is Driving Mental Illness Among the UK Young. Low wages, high rents, cost of living, insecure jobs, debt, poor healthcare infrastructure leading to anxiety and illness. Political parties obsessed with austerity, low wages, public service cuts; won't curb profiteering. Futures blighted.
Witless, heartless buffoons and malignant self-seekers
It’s very difficult to know what to do. Expressing outrage, mocking the mindless bigots, voicing despair, changing the subject…none of these make any difference. If I find a workable alternative I will tell you…
Digitale Lexikografie trifft Pandemieforschung: JProf. Dr. Susanne Kabatnik stellt sich im neusten #DGfS macht Schule Video unseren Fragen dazu, wie Pandemien den Wortschatz beeinflussen und wie man das im Schulunterricht besprechen kann. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsDZ... #BLinguistik #linguistics
I’d love to attend but daughter is having an operation then. I’m sure it will go well!
Trying a substack to see if gets more traffic than a blog: We, as Concerned Legal Lexicographers, submit this declaration in an attempt to answer the question, Is a sandwich a weapon? And if so, is it protected by the Constitution? weboflanguage.substack.com/p/is-a-sandw...
About the role: - 14 hours a week with flexible timing for mutual convenience - UK based remote working (from home) - Responsibilities include a mixture of financial and operational support - £18 per hour, negotiable Find out more details and how to apply: www.50millionvoices.org/operations-f...
Sorry I’m out of the country
This week's publication of a collection of London sayings reminded me of a project, stalled for nearly a decade...https://language-and-innovation.com/2016/06/21/londons-language/
Be like Twickenham
I think even Akhenaten probably projected more gravitas
We're past the point where language analysis ('sieve', for God's sake) can be an end in itself, but it can sharpen our focus on what's at stake and how language is part of the overall strategy of dehumanisation.
He wasn’t worth it
Like the Parthenon. He’s lost his marbles.
League Against Cruel Sports @leagueacs.bsky.social #WildlifeReserve report for August www.league.org.uk/news-and-res...
Pivot >> Discourse Theory, Critical Discourse Studies and Corpus Linguistics: A Practical Guide By Katy Brown @k8ebrown.bsky.social Free to download link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
